Guilt's a funny thing
by Blahsblah2001
Summary: Dib's ebing haunted by a ghost of someone he killed... or is he? Bad summary.


I don't own anything. Jhonen V owns all and if you don't know which Jhonen that is you need a big heaping pot o death.  
Speaking of death, when I wrote this I felt the overwhelming need to hurt something, so it'll be bloody. No likey, no ready.  
I like it personally. This is coming to you from the great land of Winsconsin, where my family and I are watching the Lumberjack World Championships. No shit.

Reactivate.  
The voice came from far away. Zim tried to listen, to recognise what the word meant. It rang some bell, he knew it…  
Pain arced through his body, bolts of electricity jump-starting his squeedly-spooch. The pain went on, and he realized that the electricity had stopped. Rolling onto his stomach, retching, he threw up onto the rough, broken gravel. He realized that he had died again, been killed by the Dib stink.  
The last thing he could remember…  
He reached a gloved hand up to his face. If possible, the pain became more acute. He wiped at his mouth, spitting out more blood.  
Bracing himself, he reached up again.  
His skull was broken in, he knew, but the nano-boots in his pak would fix that soon enough.  
Both of his eyes were blackened, one of them had a large cut above it dripping blood. He felt other cuts around his face.  
Haltingly, he got to his feet, his ribs jabbing painfully into his organs. He ignored the pain, knowing he had to get back to his base before someone found him and took him to an Earth hospital. He was in no shape to fight them off.  
Five minutes later, he was home.  
Shooing GIR off, he went into the bathroom, because there was a mirror in there.  
His face scared even himself.  
Though the cuts were partly healed already, the dried blood was still there, turning his (insanely handsome, in his opinion) face into a Halloween mask.  
Slowly, he pulled off his torn gloved and shirt.  
His body wasn't much better. In two places, the green skin bulged outward where broken bone was pressing against it. In one, the bone was actually visible.  
This would all heal. It would take a few days, but it would heal.  
There was nothing to do but wait.

Three hours earlier His red eyes glared up at me, full of nothing but hate.  
I kicked him again, enjoying the crack of bone. After all he had done to me, I couldn't hurt him enough.  
He coughed, a trickle of green blood running from his mouth. He wouldn't show me anything but hate. And I hated him even more for it. I wanted him to be afraid, to feel pain, hell, feel anything at all. He wouldn't.  
In fact, he laughed.  
"Stupid Dib-stink," he said to me, his voice thick with the blood which was choking him. "Stupid, stinking human"  
"God, dammit, Zim. Let go of your stupid ego for one"  
He laughed again.  
I kicked him again, right in his stupid smirking face. Something cracked, a sickening noise. It was my turn to laugh.  
"Laugh now, Zim. Laugh at me now. I dare you"  
He didn't.  
"Didn't think so. So what have you got to say now, huh"  
He didn't say anything. He didn't move.  
"Zim"  
I knelt down near him, felt for some kind of pulse.  
Oh, shit.  
The realization crashed down on me. I killed him. I mean, I knew I was going to but…  
Oh…shit.  
I backed slowly away from the bloodied form. His face was turned away from me, I was glad.  
Suddenly I didn't want to see it.  
My feet scrambling on the gravel, I backed away faster, turning.  
Before I knew it, I was home.  
Home and safe.  
No one had to know.  
Never had to know.

I couldn't help but look over at Zim's desk. It looked so strange not to have him there, glaring back, always glaring back.  
I forced myself to look away. Zim wouldn't be looking back at me ever again. I fixed that. I fixed it for good.  
I showed him who the superior force was. It was me.  
As it turned out, to punish us for having low attendance that day, the Skool kept us until nine o clock. I did my homework in the back corner, avoiding the paper balls thrown by the idiots in the class.  
The skool bell rang. Children trampled each other in a rush to the door. I waited for the worst of it to pass, then started toward home. It was raining.  
A plan half-formed in my mind before I realized that there wasn't any reason to push Zim in a puddle.  
Some kind of empty feeling came over me then, realizing that the rainy day was no longer an opportunity, but had been reduced to plain cruddy weather.  
I could get past this. I was fine before he came, I'll be fine now.  
"Are you coming or should I just walk home without you"  
"I'm coming"  
Gaz stopped, slowly turning to face me.  
"You mean it's raining and you're not going off to play with Zim"  
"We don't play, Gaz, we…" She wasn't paying attention. Sigh. "Zim's sick or something. He wasn't in skool today"  
"Fine. Whatever. Don't think you're getting the TV"  
And I didn't, either.

When I got home, I retreated to my room, listening to the rain patter on the ceiling, trying to force thoughts of Zim out of my head.  
He's dead. He's dead and I killed him.  
I don't even feel guilty.  
Do I?  
Course not.  
I hooked up my laptop to the internet, searching through my email for somehting that wasn't junk. Casino, webcam, casino, alien, casino.  
Back up.  
I debated before opening it. Either it was somebody serious (ha, yeah right) or it was somebody ribbing me about Zim again.  
I grinned. Nothing to rib me about, now. I opened the email.

I am here, Dib.  
I am coming to get you. Once and for all. Prepare to rue the day you ever trifled with the Irken Elite.  
The rueing begins tonight...

Yeah... Definatly somebody ribbing me... I mean, nobody knows what happened. Zim's definitely dead, so unless he's a ghost.  
Oh, crap.

I deleted the email, slamming the laptop closed. I had the creeps, that's all. I mean there's no way he could go outside in this rain... Right?  
I had a sudden image of him standing right outside my window, looking in. I looked at my window, but all I could see was blackness, the rain glinting off falling water droplets. I thought about turning the lights off, so I could see, but I didn't really want to know.  
Two things happened at once. First, the power went off, and secondly, lightning flashed, illuminating the bloody face outside the window with unearthly glow.  
The lightning left afterimages in my eyes. I tried to look out the window again, I couldn't see anything. The emergency generator for the house kicked in then, bathing the house in red light.  
I looked out into the blackness again. Nothing was there.  
Downstairs, Gaz was cursing about losing the high score. I thought about going to warn her, but I was stuck to the ground.  
Slowly, I focused on moving away from the window. Everything was thrown into unusually sharp focus, making the shadows darker and sharper than I would have liked them. I made it to the door, and the spell was broken. I ran downstairs as fast as I could.  
"Gaz, we"  
"Dib, I have just lost the highest score of anyone, ANYWHERE. I do not want to hear about how Zim cut our power, or how there's a vampire in the house, or any of your stupid paranormal crap"  
"But, Gaz, we"  
Somewhere upstairs, a door creaked open. I now officially had the creeps.  
"Let me guess, that was a bigfoot Zombie vampire"  
"No, it was Zim. He's here"  
"Tell him to go home, Dib. I don't want to be bothered right now"  
"I can't go up there, Gaz, he wants to kill me"  
"Good, tell him I'll hold you down"  
"Gaz, I am really really serious, we have to call Dad, or get out of the house or something"  
"That's great, Dib. The phone's dead, and if we go outside we'll drown. Any other plans"  
I thought hard. Bells were supposed to keep ghosts away, do we have any bells? I don't think so.  
There's nothing else to do!  
Jesus, Zim's gonna kill me for real this time.  
"What'd you do to him, anyway? Last time he actually came here Tak was planning to overthrow Earth"  
"I didn't do anyhing"  
"Yeah, right. I believe that, sure"  
A loud thump came from upstairs.  
"Gaz, you can't have not heard that"  
"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me why he's here. Or why he didn't use the stupid door"  
"I don't think he can. He's here... He's here becasue I killed him"  
"You did a pretty bad job of it"  
"Fine. Stay here. I'm going out"  
"Zim's not here, Dib. You're crazy"  
I ran out into the rain, not even stopping to get an umbrella. It didn't matter. It would be a while before Zim realized I was no longer in the house. I've got plenty of time to run... Where?  
Where could I go?  
Where?  
Think, there has to be somewhere he won't look for you. There's nowhere.  
He'll scour the whole neighborhood There's nowhere to hide Nowhere to go Where's the last palce he would look?  
WHERE?  
His own base, of course. No predator expects the prey to run into it's den.

But no predator is dead. Zim was dead.  
Right?  
Right.  
I ran toward Zim's eerily glowing house, hiding behind the fence. I looked over it, back into the road, expecting to see Zim's broken, ghostly body chasing after me.  
The road was empty.  
Of course it was. Zim was never really there, was he?  
I only saw him for a second. There's no way he could have risen from the dead, even to kill me.  
Could he really hate me that much?  
I'm being silly, runnign around in the rain, in the dark, running from someone who isn't there, someone who's dead. Someone I killed.  
Lightning lit up again, flashing agian and again.  
In the strobe affects, somehting turned the corner.  
Someone.  
Someone I knew all too well.  
Scrambling backwards on my hands and knees, I got around the corner of the house, praying that he wouldn't find me. Praying, to wahtever god I thought would listen.  
Maybe he would go in the house.  
Maybe he didn't see me at all.  
If I go around the other corner, he won't see me. He'll never know I was here.  
I crept around the corner, making my way around the other side of the house.  
He was there, waiting for me. He had his gun, the old one he used to carry.  
I scrambled backaorund, trying ot get a wall batween him and me, but he was there, too, raising the blaster, and there's nowhere to go, how can he be two palces at once?  
Nowhere to go, but.  
There's a window. Into the house. The only way away from him. I smash the window, jumping through the hole, slicing my skin on the glass and it hurts and he's here too DEAR GOD HE'S HERE TOO.  
The last thing I see is him, raising the blaster again, and he looks as surprised as I do.

Zim supposed it was guilt that had brought the Dib to his house that night. When he jumped through the broken window, in the dark, in the rain, Zim's training had taken over. The earth boy was dead before Zim ever realized what he was shooting at.  
He should have known better. He should have known.  
Guilt's a funny thing.

R&R! 


End file.
